THE MYSTERIOUS UNIVERSE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 629, 20 July 1951, Page 5

THE MYSTERIOUS UNIVERSE

Sir,-Let me offer my compliments to you on the tone and construction of your editorial of July 6. I look~forward keenly to hearing Fred Hoyle on July 12. You say that Mr. Hoyle may be able to offer us a simplified explanation and you warn us rightly that if such is the case it would have to be taken on trust. Later you say, "A complete explanation is likely to remain unattainable." To this I would only add, "Thank God!" I think that Hoyle’s belief in "continuous creation" is significant and is indicative of the direction towards which some thinking of today is turning. In any kingdom of nature where you have organic life you can observe the process of coming to birth and dying away. In a particular kingdom it may be that one type dies away but always new types come into being, In. winter, plants die away-to be reborn through their seeds in the spring. No one would postulate the plant or the animal kingdom as a dying kingdom, though particular parts of both are always dying away. As above, so below; and when man is prepared to take his place as "a living thinking being’-"one who has ,the power to see the universe as a whole’he will let his thinking expand from the kingdoms of nature around him to the starry spaces above. He will find it impossible to hold on to the idea of a "dying universe." This idea arose, I would suggest, not anthropomorphically as you imply, but out of a gross materialism which sought to project into the universal spaces a shadowy . copy of a mechanical contrivance. The scientists and the thinkers of today are beginning to let the idea of life permeate their thinking about organic nature. One does not look for a mechanical or a simplified explanation of the character of a child. Rather does one

seek to enter into a growing understanding of the child and build up a satisfying personal relationship with it. I would not regard Hoyle’s belief in continuous creation as a simplified explanation, but rather as the starting point for the expansion of our thinking and the birth of wonder which, wé are told, is the beginning of St true paleo phy. { ;

S. H.

BARNETT

(Lower Hutt).